The Secret

The Secret, a book and DVD by by Rhonda Byrne and destined for the best seller lists thanks to being mentioned by Oprah Winfrey, is an interesting anomaly, something loaded with silly extrapolations from physics
but nevertheless with something constructive to say.
Its philosophy can be roughly summed up as New Age meets the Gospel of
Prosperity meets The Tao of Physics. Overall it's a bit like Jupiter: a
solid core surrounded by a thick envelope of gas.

The Secret is the Law of Attraction; that if you focus on the negatives, your
life will be negative, whereas if you focus on positives, your life will be
positive. So one branch of physics not mentioned in the book or video is
electromagnetism. Gets confusing, all that business about like charges repelling and opposite
charges attracting. But there are all the usual silly allusions to energy
and quantum mechanics.

The Secret has supposedly been suppressed through the ages by people intent
on keeping its power for themselves, although it's a little hard to see why. If
I had a bunch of sullen, rebellious, and lackadaisical slaves, and I could get
them to be happy, contented and productive slaves just by changing their frame
of mind, why would I keep that a secret? But anyway, this vast plot to suppress
this information is why black helicopters swooped down and snatched Norman
Vincent Peale just before he could publish The Power of Positive Thinking.
And for centuries they kept the following verses out of the Bible:

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life or single cubit
to his height? (Matthew 6:27 New International Version)

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about
itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:34 New
International Version)

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any
virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8
King James Version)

Peale Did it First and Better

Anyway, braving certain death at the hands of The Global Conspiracy, I found
a one-eyed man in the bazaar in Marrakesh who provided me with some of Peale's
writings.

Altogether too many people are defeated by the everyday problems of life.
They go struggling, perhaps even whining, through their days with a sense of
dull resentment at what they consider the "bad breaks" life has given them.
In a sense there may be such a thing as "the breaks" in this life, but there
is also a spirit and method by which we can control and even determine those
breaks. It is a pity that people should let themselves be defeated by the
problems, cares, and difficulties of human existence, and it is also quite
unnecessary.

In saying this I certainly do not ignore or minimize the hardships and
tragedies of the world, but neither do I allow them to dominate. You can
permit obstacles to control your mind to the point where they are uppermost
and thus become the dominating factors in your thought pattern. By learning
how to cast them from the mind, by refusing to become mentally subservient
to them, and by channeling spiritual power through your thoughts you can
rise above obstacles which ordinarily might defeat you. By methods I shall
outline, obstacles are simply not permitted to destroy your happiness and
well being. You need be defeated only if you are willing to be. This book
teaches you how to "will" not to be.

It is appalling to realize the number of pathetic people who are hampered
and made miserable by the malady popularly called the inferiority complex.
But you need not suffer from this trouble. When proper steps are taken, it
can be overcome. You can develop creative faith in yourself—faith that is
justified.

Make a true estimate of your own ability, then raise it 10 percent. Do
not become egotistical, but develop a wholesome self-respect. Believe in
your own God-released powers.

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself
as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your
mind will seek to develop this picture. Never think of yourself as failing;
never doubt the reality of the mental image. That is most dangerous, for the
mind always tries to complete what it pictures. So always picture "success"
no matter how badly things seem to be going at the moment.

Do not built up obstacles in your imagination. Depreciate every so-called
obstacle. Minimize them. Difficulties must be studied and efficiently dealt
with to be eliminated, but they must be seen for only what they are. They
must not be inflated by fear thoughts.

A measure of how times have changed since Peale is that Adlai Stevenson, two
time Democratic candidate for President and a gentle, intelligent politician if there ever
was one, said "I find Paul appealing and Peale appalling." Peale's book, though
criticized at the time and even now by many conservative Christians, is permeated with Biblical
references. Part of the opposition to Peale arose because he challenged the
then widespread notion that self-loathing was a healthy and essential part of Christianity. The
Secret, on the other hand, is full of New Age psychobabble and garbled
allusions to quantum mechanics and perception determining reality. Most
ominously, it uses conspiratorial thinking as a selling point.

Peale was accused quite unfairly of denying the reality of evil and
uncontrollable forces in the world and of encouraging people to enter a state of
autohypnosis in which they simply denied unpleasant realities. These criticisms
come either from people who never read Peale or read their own preconceptions
into his work. On the charge of denying harsh realities, we need only repeat
Peale's warning:

In saying this I certainly do not ignore or minimize the hardships and
tragedies of the world, but neither do I allow them to dominate.

The anecdotes Peale cites, of businessmen anxious about a big presentation or
students tense about social acceptance or passing exams, simply aren't on the
scale of surviving Auschwitz or the Khmer Rouge and there's not the slightest
evidence Peale intended to imply that. Although even in those cases,
many of the survivors have credited a fierce determination to survive with helping them
get through the horror, and certainly for many who pictured themselves as not
making it, that vision proved self-fulfilling. Nor is it true that Peale espoused autohypnosis:

Do not become egotistical, but develop a wholesome self-respect.

What Peale was saying was that people who are endlessly fixated on problems
will be inhibited by them, whereas people who see themselves as overcoming
problems will attempt to find ways to solve them, and very often succeed.

What's Useful

Negative people tend to be surrounded by negative circumstances. It's true
enough that negative circumstances can go a long way toward creating a negative
outlook on life, but there are also people who maintain positive outlooks in the
same adverse circumstances. Visit the blogosphere to see how many people spend
their time stewing in resentment at the world in general.

Despite the saying "beauty is only skin deep," and the notorious shabbiness
of the personal lives of many supermodels and movie stars, I have repeatedly been struck
by
how often morally and personally ugly people have also been physically ugly. I
have seen Anna Nicole Smith's Playboy photos, and even in her prime, even
though she had all the right things in all the right numbers, places and sizes, she
was ugly.

The biggest single reason that negative people end up in a downward spiral is
that nobody wants to be around them. Nobody wants to hire them, nobody wants to
work with them, nobody wants to socialize with them. So of course they become
still more negative. A negative outlook also discourages them from tackling
problems that they are actually capable of solving. When they do tackle
problems, it's often half-heartedly, increasing the likelihood of failure, which
in turn reinforces their negativity. Positive people, on the other hand, are a
delight to be around. They get hired, they get promoted, they have friends.
Which of course helps to reinforce their positive attitude. A positive outlook
encourages people to attack problems. Solving the problem, of course, improves
their lives, and the occasional failure doesn't discourage them.

So to the extent that it encourages people to be more positive and confident
about improving things in their lives that are under their control, The
Secret can be beneficial.

What's Not Useful

First of all, the whole garbage physics discussion and the conspiratorial
overtones are pseudoscience of the worst sort.

Second, far too many people engage in visualizing positive outcomes already.
They ignore school to focus on sports or music, banking on making it in the pros
or in entertainment. They have no savings but never neglect to get that lottery
ticket. They comb over their bald spot, suck in their paunch, and hit on women
half their age. For people already inclined to wishful thinking, The Secret
is just reinforcement.

Finally, there is no Law of Attraction in any real sense. Positive attitudes
tend to lead to positive outcomes more often than negative attitudes because of
the effect those attitudes have on the individual and those around her. The
attitudes per se have no effect on the actual results. I saw a cartoon
once where two prisoners were shackled hand and foot to a wall in a gigantic
cell with one tiny window far above the floor. One said to the other "Now here's
my plan..." Positive attitude, but not likely to get results. Custer went into
the Little Big Horn visualizing himself a victor.

Positive thinking, whether Peale's version or The Secret, works if it
encourages people to take action on things they can change. It doesn't work if
all you do is think positive thoughts but take no action. And of course it has
no power over things you can't control. It can't prevent your flight from being
delayed, a drunk driver from hitting you, or a burglar from invading your house
while you're away. Although even in uncontrollable situations, a positive
outlook helps by enabling people to seize upon things they can control.
It can't stop your flight from being delayed but it just might work wonders when
dealing with the overworked ticket agent. It won't stop a drunk driver but it
might just make you a bit more alert or more capable of coping after the
accident. It might not stop a burglar, but many studies have shown that street
criminals select victims who look confused, inattentive, or vulnerable. Studies
of hijacking and terrorist incidents have shown that the people who cope best
are those with a strong sense of identity and self confidence.